Uzbekistan Airways’ 787 Business Class: How Bad Was It?

Hello from Tashkent! On Thursday we flew from New York to Tashkent on Uzbekistan Airways’ new nonstop flight. For years the airline has operated a flight from New York to Tashkent via Riga, though as of last month one of the two weekly frequencies operates nonstop. On top of that, earlier this year Uzbekistan Airways took delivery of their first 787, which replaces the 767 that previously flew the route.

So, how was Uzbekistan Airways’ 787 business class? While I’ll have a full trip report soon, I’ll share my initial thoughts in this post.

Uzbekistan Airways’ 787 business class cabin consists of a total of 24 seats, spread across four rows in a 2-2-2 configuration. There are three rows in the forward cabin, and then a single row in the rear cabin. These are standard forward facing fully flat seats, and are one of the more disappointing business class hard products out there for a new plane. I also found their cabin finishes to be quite boring.

Let’s start with the positives. The crew was generally well intentioned. Well, at least two of the three business class flight attendants were. Service wasn’t polished by any means, but they seemed to mean well.

Furthermore, the food wasn’t terrible. At least not the first meal. While the food wasn’t amazing, I was impressed overall, including that they placed the meals directly on the table rather than on a tray.

There were no menus so I’m making assumptions here, but the meal began with a salad with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella, an appetizer of salmon, shrimp, roast beef, and chicken, and a cheese plate.

For the main course I had the beef. The other two choices were chicken or fish. Very descriptive, I know!

Then for dessert there was a fruit plate as well as a chocolate cake.

The breakfast wasn’t quite as good, however. There were no choices, and it consisted of a bland omelet, a small fruit plate, strawberry banana yogurt, and a stale croissant.

The airline just put so little effort into the product overall, it really disappointed me. As a point of comparison, my AZAL Azerbaijan flight from New York to Baku last year was significantly better.

Uzbekistan Airways may have nice new 787s, but that otherwise doesn’t seem to represent a new chapter for them. And I guess that’s not a surprise, since I’m pretty sure we were about the only paid business class passengers. The cabin ended up being about two thirds full, and almost everyone else was operationally upgraded, since economy was oversold.

We all take different approaches to how we acquire currency when abroad. My first choice is always to pay by credit card in order to earn points, but that’s not a practical option in many countries. When it comes to getting cash, I almost always employ…

Hello from Uzbekistan! I'm spending the week in the "stans," before slowly heading back to the US next week on a fun routing. I'll have more details on that soon. On the miles & points front, this week we saw a great mistake fare on ANA to Australia,…

More from One Mile at a Time

The Express Tribune reports on the rather unusual reason that Pakistan International Airlines crews have been kicked out of a UK hotel that they use for layovers. Apparently there have been many reports of male crew making female guests feel uncomfortable,…

Hong Kong Airlines is Hong Kong’s third largest airline. They recently took delivery of their first A350, and they’re using the plane for longhaul expansion, which is exciting. This summer Hong Kong Airlines added flights between Hong Kong and Vancouver…

I always like to follow along with the latest airline startups, and try to write about them when I see them. For example, I've written about two Ghanian airlines that have supposedly intended to launch operations in the past year or so. One of them is…

It's not often that I take domestic trips for the purposes of reviews, though this one was an exception. On Wednesday and Thursday I spent about 30 hours flying what ordinarily wouldn't be a very exciting routing. However, it allowed me to review American's…

In the interest of full disclosure, One Mile At A Time earns a referral bonus for purchases made through some of the below links. These are products and services we use ourselves, and are the best offers we know of. Check out our Advertising Policy for…

Yesterday I wrote about the unique plane that the Vancouver Canucks chartered for their flight to China. While charters are standard for sports teams, what made this special is the type of plane they were chartering. Rather than chartering a commercial…

About luckyBen Schlappig (aka Lucky) is a travel consultant, blogger, and avid points collector. He travels about 400,000 miles a year, primarily using miles and points to fund his first class experiences. He chronicles his adventures, along with industry news, here at One Mile At A Time.

@Imperator Because experiencing and reviewing premium airline products is a core part of this blog. Sometimes he’s pleasantly surprised, sometimes unpleasantly surprised, and sometimes the product lives down (or up) to the reports from others.

Based on this review I don’t think I’d fly with them myself, short of outside circumstances mandating it such as required travel with no other options that get me where I need to go.

Is there some generic catering company that services these lesser known airlines and charters? I used to fly on a government chartered plane back and forth from a far away land and the catering looked the EXACT same.

Why bother seriously ? Ask anyone if they care about this airline 100 times, You’d probably get 99 sober negatives and one drunk and high positive. I think this was the most useless flight and review You have ever written.

Ben: What ‘n’ has written above is very accurate. While we understand that this blog pertains to luxury travel we fear that, like our Hollywood celebrities, you are increasingly completely out of touch with what the Average Joe’s life is like. Yes, please do fly coach overseas even just once a year to put things into perspective.

And that meal – except for the gross tater-tots next to the steak – is better than what you’d get on any North American airline’s overseas business class. Especially the appetizers.

Look you forgo the obvious slam for flying what is the xyz on the list of airlines, and simply look at this as a learning experience. Seeing that not that many years ago we had the Borat movie, and most people in the US if asked to point to Uzbekistan on a map would be lucky to find Azia let alone where in Asia it is.
Not to put too fine a point on it, you are lucky that you got what you got. I am older, but I have flown on airlines where the locals’ carry on were some sort of local farm animal, and a bag of food that smelled like what came from the farm animal. Those days are gone, but at least they have a Boeing jet and not some Russian lawn dart.

I do my best to avoid having breakfast on any airline. Even on Emirates in Business the breakfast is poor (although the flights to and from Japan look like they have a good Asian breakfast, but that’s the only good-looking airline breakfast I’ve seen).

You’ve brought back fond, quirky memories of my 2 1/2 years living in Tashkent 1997-2000. You may have been served Uzbeksiy Shampagnskiy–the successor to the old standard Soviet Champagne. Take care in the summer heat if you make it out to Bukhara or Khiva and I highly recommend exploring the Tashkent metro system.

I used to fly Uzbek Air a lot–back in the 90s registered expats could play the currency exchange rates against each other and buy plane tickets with a backpack of cash for effectively an 80% discount–it used to be $220 round trip from Tashkent to London!

Thanks for this review, I’m actually going on Uzbekistan Airways in a week via DXB. We’ll have a government minder, and I hope that translates to a smoother airport experience.

I’m from Kuwait, so if you have any questions, let me know. We have two airlines that I don’t think you’ve mentioned but are worth looking into, Wataniya and Jazeera. With regards to Kuwait Airways, they have the new ‘royal suites’ that fly to JFK, but i still think it stops in Shannon.

Finally, I just want to say, thanks for reviewing first and business class products so well.

Lucky… As others have pointed out, you are increasingly out of touch. I really enjoy reading your reviews, but your perspective has become unbalanced.

This product is miles ahead to what you would get in economy, which you really need to experience on a proper long-haul flight. The seats and the food seem pretty nice here, and it doesn’t seem a bad way at all to fly from/to Uzbekistan. Sure, there are real issues for a business class product : the lack of amenity kits, the headphones and those awful slippers. But all this is clearly minor for the average traveller and not “terrible”.

You are so used to reviewing airlines that maybe you don’t realise that you overemphasize some review criteria that don’t matter that much.

The meals look (and I’m sure taste) miles better than the slop we were served on a recent AA Business class LAX to LHR flight. It was my first time on AA and while I was v impressed with the hard product, the food was unbelievably bad; like worse than British Airways bad and that’s saying something! (This was pre-lobsterrollgate so didn’t realise quite how low AA could sink)

At least they didn’t offer water on a “one per person” basis. The food actually looked pretty good, even the bland omelette. No, this airline doesn’t go on my personal no fly list. TAP and Azores have an exclusive on that privilege, thanks to your thorough reviews.

Hey Lucky,
Long time reader here. I’m gonna chime in with the other readers here to agree that I think you’re a little harsh. This airline’s product wasn’t *bad.* Sure, it was no Emirates, but it looks like you got decent food (as opposed to a “lobster roll”), had friendly flight attendants, and had a hard product that isn’t particularly subpar to most other ones out there on the market. Honestly, It’s no Air France First Class, but not every airline is going to be, and that’s rather the whole point. If there was something honestly wrong, like smoking, we’d be happy for you to bring it up, but as is, you sound like you’re complaining that not every airline is Air France La Premiere.

Recent Trip Reports

In late May American opened their new Flagship Lounge in New York, with greatly expanded access requirements. However, the most revolutionary thing about the lounge wasn't the space as such, but rather one of the features inside the lounge. Specifically,…

American is in the process of revamping their international lounge experience, including creating new Flagship Lounges. American's Flagship Lounges used to just be open to international first class and oneworld Emerald passengers, while now they're also…

With my flight from Los Angeles landing at around 11:30PM, and me needing to head to the airport the next morning before 6AM, I just looked for the most basic hotel that would earn me points and stay credits with either Hyatt or Starwood. Many airport…

I reviewed Virgin America's first class product between Newark and Los Angeles a few months ago, so I'll keep this review shorter, as I just want to touch on a few aspects of the Virgin America experience. This time around I was flying a midcon rather…

Recent Posts

Hawaii is a hugely popular tourist destination from Japan, and the number of daily flights between the sets of islands is staggering. For example, just between Tokyo and Honolulu there are flights by ANA, China Airlines, Delta, JAL, Korean Air, and United.…

Six days after Hurricane Maria, the destruction in Puerto Rico is nearing a humanitarian crisis. Most of the island is still without power, which means people can't use credit cards (or get cash) to buy supplies, and even those who were prepared with…

Delta was the first global US airline to introduce a revenue requirement for status, award miles based on dollars spent rather than distance flown, etc. However, they've also once in a while made some positive changes, and have areas where they're especially…

Last week I wrote about Seated, which is an app that gives you $15-20 in gift cards (with your choice of Amazon, Starbucks, or Uber) every time you dine out at a participating restaurant. You might say "what's the catch?" and the truth is that there…

About Lucky

Ben Schlappig (aka Lucky) is a travel consultant, blogger, and avid points collector. He travels about 400,000 miles a year, primarily using miles and points to fund his first class experiences. He chronicles his adventures, along with industry news, here at One Mile At A Time.

Meet The Team

One Mile at a Time is owned by PointsPros, Inc. This site is for entertainment purposes only. The owner of this site is not an investment advisor, financial planner, nor legal or tax professional and articles here are of an opinion and general nature and should not be relied upon for individual circumstances.

Advertiser Disclosure: Some links to credit cards and other products on this website will earn an affiliate commission. Outside of banner ads published through the Boarding Area network, this compensation does not impact how and where products appear on this site. While we do try to list all the best miles and points deals, the site does not include all card companies or credit card offers available in the marketplace. Please view our advertising policy page for additional details about our partners.

Editorial Disclosure: The editorial content on this page is not provided by any entity mentioned herein. Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.